• Chapelgentry@lemmynsfw.com
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      51 minutes ago

      You need 270 Electoral College votes to prevent the vote going to the states for the Presidency. There are 538 votes available. The only way to have more than two parties compete and have the election not go to the House is if one party is unified and has large public support against the other parties that do not. This essentially creates a single-party state.

      Ergo, our system is designed to have two parties, each with roughly half the population behind them. Anything more mathematically ends in a single party state.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Then why do they never win any votes in the electoral college? When is the last time a third party ever succeeded nationally in the US when it didn’t involve the dissolution of some other party that preceded it?